German, British and Canadian Governments are monitoring Facebook’s assault of the general definition of privacy. Meanwhile the shameless free market fundamentalists who’ve wormed themselves into the American Government, in great numbers, are giving “favors” and trading players…

The minister, Ilse Aigner, first raised concerns about Facebook two months ago, urging the network to upgrade its privacy settings.

Last week, in response to a backlash among users, Facebook announced that it was simplifying its privacy controls and applying them retroactively, so users can protect the status updates and photos they posted in the past.

Those changes were “a first step in the right direction, but I still have my doubts as to whether these improvements will really bring a true turning point,” Aigner said after meeting Richard Allan, Facebook’s director of European public policy.

Aigner said the meeting “unfortunately confirmed my skepticism.”

She said she plans to leave the network, but will remain in contact with Facebook managers and “will not rest until data protection is improved decisively.”

The changes so far aren’t enough “to protect the privacy of users and to comply with our German law, which has higher standards than elsewhere in the world and America,” Aigner added.

She complained that the network’s data protection system remains too complicated and geared toward opting out of sharing information rather than opting in.

Aigner has also harshly criticized Google Inc. for failing to respect German data protection regulations through its Street View mapping program.

Facebook announced Thursday the hire of Marne Levine, as its first-ever Vice President of Global Public Policy. She’ll start at the Palo Alto, Calif.-based tech company next month but will remain based in Washington, D.C. Currently, she serves as chief of staff for the White House National Economic Counsel; previously, following a background in the online payments space, she worked in the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Legislative Affairs and Public Liaison, and was chief of staff to former Treasury head Larry Summers when he was president of Harvard University.

“I’m excited that Marne is joining my team as Vice President, Global Public Policy,” a statement from Facebook vice president of communications Elliot Schrage read. “With over 70 percent of our users living outside the United States, her unique mix of government and Internet industry experience will be invaluable to help Facebook address some of the most interesting questions at the intersection of technology and public policy.”

As Facebook draws ever closer to the half-billion-member milestone, the company increasingly finds itself dealing with international governments and legislative bodies both inside and outside of the U.S. Part of Levine’s job will be to help build public policy teams in Asia, Europe, and the Americas; Facebook’s existing D.C. branch head, Tim Sparapani, will continue to manage the company’s relationship with the U.S. government.

Part of Levine’s background–connections to Harvard University, the Treasury Department, and Larry Summers–sounds a whole lot like that of another Facebook executive, chief operating officer and former Google sales exec Sheryl Sandberg, who was Summers’ chief of staff when he was at the Treasury Department. Sandberg was one of Facebook’s first prominent employees to come from a government background rather than Silicon Valley.

Facebook’s existing D.C. connections also run deep thanks to Donald Graham, chairman of the Washington Post Company, who serves on Facebook’s board of directors. The Washington Post was also the outlet for an op-ed penned by CEO Mark Zuckerberg after the company’s most recent privacy controversy, indicating Facebook’s desire to further permeate the close-knit world of D.C. influence and dealmaking.

Who doesn’t get friend requests from weirdos? I know I do. I tend to ignore them when Facebook respects my wish enough to give me that right to ignore them. There’ve been a few times though that Facebook has been like, “Oh you can’t ignore them. Sorry but no.”

Honestly. The thing with the Pedro… Pablo… whatever – dude is, I think the request got hung up in a server process. Somehow the server, instead of quantifying my input to ignore and block this person, just forgot wtf it was supposed to do and shuffled ol’ Pablo whatever off into the la-la land of the “Hanging Process.”

Really why does it take 2 – 5 minutes to send one line of chat info? Interface BS or flash retardation? Or both?

We even tried hooking up our instant messenger software to our FB chat accounts hoping to avoid the flash interface. Facebook blocked the instant messenger client’s access so that didn’t work. In fact we almost got permanently locked out of our accounts because the instant messenger client kept trying and trying to log in with fail. The password and user name were correct but Facebook chat just refused to interface, like it says it will. After the 10th attempt Facebook started treating the attempts like malicious entries and of course, the process kept looping till we had no choice but to enter our terminals manually, and kill the process. Phew! It’s true – Facebook chat is technical a mess. They don’t care either.

We like to say we know how to rank issues and the most immediate one is this sickening disaster. So in light of what’s happening to the Gulf, the coastlines, the fishermen there, and everyone’s economic well-being we want to share our ideology of an all out solution to this unchecked dependence that’s ruining our lives. And you know what? It fits right in with the 5th anniversary of the death of our good friend who suffered in her last moments as a cement truck knocked her off her bicycle, running her over on her way to work on June 3rd.

Our ideology for cutting oil dependence is to cut its use. Not the basic suggestions of turning your lights off but with a greater goal of limiting oil’s usage.

We dream of a future where cities are bicycle only. It takes us an hour to ride 30-miles on a bicycle. We understand cities aren’t all 30-miles in circumference, some are larger but you know what? We don’t want to die from an environmental disaster, from a cement truck, or from the aggravation of sitting in rush hour traffic on a fucking Saturday! Right now, your drive to see the city for the weekend from you boring burb is an issue. Your drive to the grocery store, is an issue. Your daily commute to your job is… that’s right, an issue. You’re dependent beyond your control.

Stop letting these ass hat blue-bloods tell us how the economy and society are to work. Stop using their systems. The only way to fix this problem is with new, off the wall, sort of thinking. Cut vehicle traffic out of cities. Use bikes and public transit in cities. Get your groceries, go see your friends, go to work on a bike or train. No cars in the city unless for exceptions, like life or death situations and regulated construction routes. No cars in the city but do use them for great distances like a trip from Louisville to Nashville, NYC to Philadelphia, San Fran to LA…

We realize this is a crude ideology but we think it has a ring of solution to it. And now back to the Facebook monitoring program.

We’re going to start harvesting your comments related to Facebook and other privacy issues – ONLY if they’re intelligent. Like this guy’s here:

“They [Facebook Inc.] didn’t make anything clear. Their “guidance,” from what I’ve seen, constitutes for some wordy legalese policy they expect everyday (non-lawyer) people to sit, read, and understand. It’s fine print shenanigans over at Facebook headquarters while they single-handedly change the definition of personal privacy for the worst. This has potential to affect everyone. Not just Facebook users.”

As far a comment harvesting and only choosing the intelligent comments: We may pick on the stupid ones too if only to dilute the trite amount of ignorance to life ratio there is out there.
ie… People who sound like this: “Ahhhh!!! I’m mad because everyone else is!!! But I really don’t know why!!! I’m so mad I’m going to join a group of other stupid angry people who are being manipulated by the ruling class to kill the progress that would benefit me!!! Making me angrier because there’s nothing there to help me!!!! Ahhhh!!!!”